As the season begins, the Giants have revealed the list of 27 players that the San Francisco Giants have assigned to the alternate site in Sacramento for the start of the season.  The list includes not only Major League hopefuls, but also several of the team’s top prospects who participated in spring training.

Marco Luciano, Joey Bart, Heliot Ramos, Hunter Bishop, and Will Wilson all were among the players who will spend April in Sacramento.  The roster may change through the month, but the alternate site will exist until the minor league season is scheduled to start on May 4th.  Meanwhile, most of the other minor leaguers, most of whom were not in big league camp for spring training, will attend minor league spring training in Arizona.

The roster includes:

Pitchers:
Daniel Álvarez
Anthony Banda
Kervin Castro
Tyler Cyr
Camilo Doval
Luis González
Ashton Goudeau
Scott Kazmir
Dominic Leone
Zack Littell
Yunior Marte
Phil Pfeifer
Gregory Santos
Sam Selman
Jimmie Sherfy
Shun Yamaguchi

Catchers:
Joey Bart
Ricardo Genoves

Infielders:
Arismendy Alcántara
Jason Krizan
Jason Vosler
Will Wilson
Logan Wyatt

Outfielders:
Hunter Bishop
Steven Duggar
Joe McCarthy
Heliot Ramos

These players are in addition to the taxi squad who will start the season, as the Giants will be on the road.  Pitchers Trevor Gott, Conner Menez, and Nick Tropeano, outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr., and catcher Chadwick Tromp will join the team on the road, and will join the alternate site when the Giants come back for their home opener on April 9th.

There are some changes to the alternate site rules as compared to the 2020 season.  The biggest is that changes to the alternate site roster can be made, as opposed to last season’s strictly controlled roster.  Also, the Giants will be able to hold scrimmages against the Athletics alternate site, giving the players more opportunities for competition than just intrasquad scrimmages that the camp did in 2020.

The alternate site will have many players that likely will be a part of the eventual Triple-A Sacramento River Cats roster, but there’s an interesting mix of high-level minor leaguers close to the majors, and lower level prospects.  Of the 16 pitchers, only three are pitchers that that would be reasonably expected to spend the season in the lower minors.  But of the 11 position players, five are likely to start below Triple-A.